Gentlemen, jocularly / SAT 1-17-26 / Longest number writable in standard Roman numerals / Korean barbecue rib dish / Setups for some elaborate group pictures / Servant in "The Handmaid's Tale" / Carlos Jobim, father of the bossa nova / Artificially unsophisticated / "All that really matters is if your rhymes was ___" (MF Doom lyric)

Constructor: Adam Aaronson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: GALBI (43D: Korean barbecue rib dish) —

Galbi (Korean: 갈비; pronounced [kal.bi]), kalbi, galbi-gui (갈비구이), or grilled ribs is a type of gui (grilled dish) in traditional Korean cuisine. "Galbi" is the Korean word for "rib", and the dish is usually made with beef short ribs. When pork spare ribs or another meat is used instead, the dish is named accordingly. Galbi is served raw, then cooked on tabletop grills usually by the diners themselves. The dish may be marinated in a sweet and savory sauce usually containing soy sauce, garlic, and sugar. Both non-marinated and marinated galbi are often featured in Korean barbecue. In Japan, this and many other dishes in Korean barbecue influenced yakiniku, a fusion cuisine that often makes use of galbi (glossed as karubi). (wikipedia)

• • •

Seems like this comes down to whether figuring out the longest possible Roman numeral is your idea of a good time or not (8D: Longest number writable in standard Roman numerals). For me: not. Not awful, just ... tedious. Actually, in the end, not that hard. I just kept writing the Roman numerals in descending order, as many as I could write of each without the number looking wrong ("DD" = "M," so ... wrong; "LL" = "C," so ... wrong). And there it was: 3,888. That is ... something. A number. That is what that is. A very arbitrary number. Feels like a showy kind of stunt, but it left me cold, as did the somewhat juvenile fill. FARTSY and F-BOMB and PIT STAINS are the kind of thing that seem designed to get a laugh out of a twelve-year-old. I could've gone my whole life without seeing FARTSY in the grid, honestly. You'll be fascinated / thrilled / bored to know that this is not the first FART in the NYTXW—that great moment in crossword fill history came back in 2023 ([Brain ___]). But this is the first FARTSY. You can just imagine me tapping the Not All Debuts Are Good™ sign here. This is all to say that I could feel the puzzle trying to be flashy, "young," etc., and it felt like it was trying a little too hard. But most of the grid is actually pretty solid. Ordinary. Fine. The three "X"s from the Roman numeral and the four "K"s from KNICK-KNACK make for some lively fill in the crosses. None of the marquee fill really wowed me, but MEGAPIXELS has some juice (41A: Units for. high-resolution camera). FAUX-NAIF is also kind of cool (39A: Artificially unsophisticated). I thought "NAIF" was the noun and "NAIVE" was the adjective, so FAUX-NAIF (as an adjective) seemed odd to me, but it's right. Even though "naive" is much more common as an adjective than "naif," when you add "FAUX" to the front, only NAIF survives. No such thing as "faux-naive." I guess the "FAUX" Frenchifies it, and since "naif" (unlike "naive") is a French word ... voilà! 

[38A: "All that really matters is if your rhymes was ___" (MF Doom lyric)]

Not loving the triple "IN" in the puzzle today (MIX-INS, ASK IN, LAID IN). LAID IN is particularly awkward, in that those exact words aren't really likely to leave your mouth in that particular formation. There's definitely such a thing as a LAY-IN, and you can LAY (the ball) IN, but you'd probably never say "she LAID IN the basketball." "Laid it in" is the phrase I'm hearing in my head. The answer here is grammatically correct, but awkward-sounding. Also awkward: DELINT. I am quite sure it is a verb. It just looks silly. The only real trouble I had today involved (shockingly!) names. ANTONIO was certainly the best guess for how that name was going to turn out, but I thought maybe ANTONIN or maybe some other Brazilian spelling as yet unknown to me (6D: ___ Carlos Jobim, father of the bossa nova). As for the [Servant in "The Handmaid's Tale"] (RITA), no idea. I read that novel when I was in college (on my own, not for school), and liked it, and saw the (somewhat maligned) movie adaptation starring Natasha Richardson, and liked that, but once it came around again as a TV show, I was like "meh, I get the idea, I think I don't need to see this." And I haven't seen a single episode. So the names of anyone in that novel / movie / TV series are all unknown to and/or long forgotten by me. I'd also never heard of GALBI. Haven't lived near a good Korean place since I left Ann Arbor, and back then, all I ever ordered was bibimbap. I looked at GALBI (the last answer I got—I needed every cross), and thought, "isn't that some bygone Roman emperor?" And no, it's not, but yes, almost. I was close. GALBA has been in the NYTXW 20 times, usually clued as [Nero's successor]. It's somewhat less common these days than it was in the pre-Shortz era. 

Speaking of "less common these days than it was in the pre-Shortz era," I did another 1986 crossword today (printed out from the "Times Machine," which shows you old editions of the paper, and which I was using to look at movies that were in theaters this week forty years ago). It was a Thursday puzzle and I managed to solve it all perfectly. It had a theme, but it was very rudimentary (answers containing a standalone letter, e.g. C-RATIONS, DOCTOR K, MISTER T, etc.). The letters didn't even spell anything. Felt like a themeless. But doable. Why am I talking about it? Because it contained one answer that looked so nuts that I was sure it was wrong. That answer: ETAH (18A: Peary's winter base). I knew (or mostly knew) that Admiral Peary was an arctic explorer, but ... ETAH? Really wanted to change it to UTAH, but first of all, weird place for a "winter base" if you're exploring the Arctic, and second of all, the "U" would've given me EDUNS in the cross (5D: British noble family), and while I'm willing to buy almost any name, I was fairly sure EDENS had to be right. Which left me with ETAH. Unavoidably ETAH. So I looked it up and—sure enough:

There's also an ETAH in Uttar Pradesh. Just FYI. ETAH is a great example of Shortz's obscurity-eliminating effect on the puzzle. ETAH is emblematic of the kind of obscure geographical trivia that used to run rampant in crosswords, short answers you were expected to know if you wanted to solve crosswords. ETAH was going gangbusters for decades. 108 appearances before Shortz. Margaret Farrar, Will Weng, Eugene T. Maleska, they all loved ETAH. Then Shortz took over, and the ETAH pipeline went dry overnight. There were three appearances in 1993 (just before Shortz took over), and then ... none for over a decade. And after that single appearance (2004), there haven't been any more. None. Zip zero zilch. The only other thing in the 1986 grid that I really didn't know was SHEE, which is apparently a [Gaelic fairy].

We now return to our regularly scheduled puzzle: 

Bullets:

• 10A: What "margarita" means in Spanish (DAISY) — maybe it's because I'm solving at night instead of in the morning (when I usually solve), but my brain couldn't make sense of this clue. That is, I thought the wording meant that the answer would be "in Spanish." So my brain was like "well, there's a 'margarita' pizza, so it must be Italian, and now the puzzle wants to know what it means in Spanish ... weird." Well, first, the pizza is actually "Margherita," and second, "margarita" is already Spanish, and the clue just wants to know what it means in English. Needless to say, I got DAISY mostly from crosses.
• 16A: What Anora and Vanya do in 2024's "Anora" (ELOPE) — new ELOPE clue! Those are hard to come by. Surprised we haven't seen ANORA in the grid yet. Best Picture winner, short answer, all common letters. It's tailor-made. Ticks all the boxes. Valid in every way, and almost certainly useful from a constructing standpoint. I assume we'll see it by the end of this year. 
• 46A: Setups for some elaborate group pictures (RISERS) — I had to get this cross down to _ITA / -ISERS before I finally saw RISERS (as we've established, I didn't know the Handmaid's Tale woman). And yes, people arranged on stairs, I can see how such a photo might get "elaborate." Coincidentally, RISER (singular) was in the 1986 puzzle I just solved (above). 

• 4D: Grandson of Eve (ENOS) — here's the thing about crosswordese—it can bail you out when you're stuck, or help you get started, as it did for me today. First full answer in the grid for me today. I am no bible expert, but I am an expert on biblical names likely to appear in the crossword. ENOS is up near the top (when it not getting a chimp clue, or an early-'80s TV clue)

• 28D: Worker who's the subject of the song "Sixteen Tons" (COAL MINER) — if you look real carefully at the town square in Back to the Future (the square as it appeared in the '50s, that is), you can see a record store with a "Just Arrived" sign out front. The records that have "just arrived": "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" and ... "16 Tons"! Bizarre that I noticed this at all when I watched the movie last year, let alone remembered it today. It's completely irrelevant to the plot. Just a background detail. 

• 36D: Good marks? (SAPS) — "mark" here is a potential victim of a scam. A target. A patsy.
• 42D: Gentlemen, jocularly (GERMS) — from the (Vaudevillean??? Milton Berlean??) expression, "Good evening, ladies and GERMS." You can find some dudes being weird about the phrase on a "Men's Rights" subreddit here. 
• 45D: Dough at a taquería (PESOS) — didn't love this, as there are countless taquerías in the United States and they all take U.S. dollars. The "dough" at a taquería is going to depend entirely on where that taquería is. If the taqueria is in Mexico, then sure, PESOS. Unless PESOS is an actual dough, like MASA. It's not, is it? We're talking about money, right? Yes, I'm sure that's right. If it's not, I'll hear about it.

That's it. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Nimble, zigzagging maneuver / FRI 1-16-26 / Goal-oriented global org.? / Shortest-reigning English monarch (9 days) / Leading character on social media? / Some terrarium denizens / White House partner, for short / Classic 1926 poem associated with the Harlem Renaissance / Place for trading stories? / Dialect featured in the literature of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison

Constructor: Kyle Dolan

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: JINK (25D: Nimble, zigzagging maneuver) —

1

: a quick evasive turn : slip

2

jinks plural : pranks, frolics

especially : high jinks

Besides the fact that jink first appears in Scottish English, the exact origins of this shifty little word are unknown. What can be said with certainty is that the word has always expressed a quick or unexpected motion. For instance, in two poems from 1785, Robert Burns uses jink as a verb to indicate both the quick motion of a fiddler's elbow and the sudden disappearance of a cheat around a corner. In the 20th century, the verb caught on with air force pilots and rugby players, who began using it to describe their elusive maneuvers to dodge opponents and enemies. Jink can also be used as a noun meaning "a quick evasive turn" or, in its plural form, "pranks." The latter use was likely influenced by the term high jinks, which originally referred in the late 17th century to a Scottish drinking game and later came to refer to horseplay. (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Well, I got the "difficulty" I've been looking for, but unfortunately it was not accompanied by much joy. The marquee fill is solid but not particularly exciting, and most of the "difficulty" was achieved with proper-noun trivia, or awkward cluing, or ... "JINK," whatever the hell that is. We're coming up on the 40th anniversary of the last time JINK appeared in the NYTXW, which tells you something about its currency. Yeesh. No one should need a "J" that badly.  I'm actually not sure if the puzzle was more challenging than usual historically, or just more challenging than the Fridays that have been served up in recent years. All I know is this took me at least 2x as long as yesterday's puzzle, and it had none of the whoosh and zoom and sparkle that I really love in a Friday. Four highly segmented corners prevented a kind of free flow through the grid, and the banks of three long answers in each corner, while they hold up just fine, don't really sing. HERDING CATS was a high, but the high of that answer was offset by the low of its symmetrical counterpart, GETS A BAD RAP, an answer which EATS A BAD SANDWICH, for sure. It's a fine phrase, but clunky as a standalone answer. No hope on YOKO (4D: "The Memory Police" author ___ Ogawa) or "GLORY"—who remembers Best Original Songs? Can you remember last year's Best Original Song? I'll give you a hint: it was from Emilia Pérez. Go ahead, take your time [Jeopardy! music plays]. Time's up. We were looking for "What is 'EL MAL'?" Holy crap, that's gonna be in the grid some day, isn't it? Five letters, all common ... OK, just remember that you heard it here first (or you're hearing it again, whatever): "EL MAL," Best Original Song of 2024 (awarded at the 2025 Oscars). GLORY is such a nice, ordinary word. So many ways to go. Trivia = [frowny face]. 

If the long answers in the corners aren't particularly exciting, they are remarkably clean, I'll give them that. There's something to be said for that. Well, a space mission with an RRN (Random Roman Numeral) isn't that great, but the rest are all fine. No tortured phrases, no niche slang. The NW corner is probably the strongest of the lot, with a reasonably clever "?" clue on BABY SHOWER (1A: Coming out party?) over two rock-solid colloquialisms ("ANYONE HOME?," SINK OR SWIM). Outside of trivia ignorance, my trouble today came from either clue vagueness, clue badness, or perilous parsing adventures. Because I didn't have the "J" from JINK (ugh), I absolutely could not see JANE GREY. I should've remembered that she was monarch for a few days—I remember coming across and mentioning that fact on the blog just last years—but I didn't. Not only did I know have the "J" (JINK), I didn't have the "G" ("GLORY," bah!), and so both initials just weren't there for me. When I saw it ended in "Y," my immediate feeling wasn't "Oh, it's JANE GREY!" Instead, it was, "well, SAYS must be wrong—the monarch must end in a Roman numeral." So I pulled SAYS. Idiocy. I knew what 43A: Leading character on social media? was getting at instantly, but when AT SIGN wouldn't fit, I just ... blanked. I know that the answer should be AT SIGN because that is how it has appeared in the NYTXW ten times now (7 in singular, 3 in plural). Whereas this is just the second AT SYMBOL. Y'all should decide if it's a sign or a symbol and stick to it. Please. 

No idea what FOREX is (51A: Market for currencies, informally). Sounds like a condom brand (it's actually short for "Foreign Exchange Market"). Thought FAUX was FAKE (39D: Like leatherette). Could not have known at that point that FAKE was already in play (with FAKE PLANTS). Honestly spent a few seconds wondering what a CART RAILER was before I mentally attached the "T" to "RAILER" to get TRAILER, ugh. Thought the Welsh "Ian" was EWAN (which looks a lot like EVAN, and looks kinda Welsh, frankly, but is actually a Scottish "Owen"). Cluing FLOTUS as [White House partner, for short] is ridiculous, since no one calls him "White House." FLOTUS's "partner" is POTUS. Like ... by definition. Those are the equivalents. I guess the idea is supposed to be "Partner (of the President) who resides in the White House." So not "partner of" but "partner in." Really awful, however you slice it. I was slow in the NE too, but mostly for good old-fashioned clue ambiguity. WAGES was vague/hard. WRAP was vague/hard (11A: Finish (up)). GAS CAN was vague/hard (24A: Trunk item). The "PET" part of PET SNAKES was not at all expected (14D: Some terrarium denizens). This was all frustrating, but it's the kind of frustrating I can live with. Friday-level frustrating. It's fine. I would love to give a thumbs-up to "LET'S ROCK" for originality and ... just ... colloquial vim, I guess, but I hate that expression. Sounds corny. I actually like "LET'S ROLL" a lot better. Anyway, sometimes an answer just nails-on-chalkboards you and there's no accounting for it. Not an objective fault of the puzzle. Just ... incompatibility.

Bullets:

• 19A: Classic 1926 poem associated with the Harlem Renaissance ("I, TOO") — longtime solvers will fill this in automatically. It has crosswordese status, for sure. I can imagine novice solvers being stumped by this one, especially crossing (as it does) two other proper nouns (ANITA, YOKO), as well as the startlingly hard-(for me)-to-parse BY NOW (3D: Already). Really really wanted one word there.
• 21A: Creatures that can turn into humans on land, in Scottish folklore (SEALS) — real Scottish puzzle today. Scotland in the EVAN clue. JINK is a "word" favored by Burns that first appears in Scottish English, and now ... Scottish wereseals. I have some vague memory of this bit of folklore from having watched John Sayles's The Secret of Roan Inish (1994). Yes, here we go: "It is centered on the Irish and Orcadian folklores of selkies—seals that can shed their skins to become human" (wikipedia). SELKIES would be a good grid word. Zero NYTXW appearances to date. 

• 38A: Place for trading stories? (BOOK FAIR) — sigh, you don't "trade" stories at a BOOK FAIR. You do "trade" in stories, by selling them. Is that what was meant? Awkward.
• 54A: Hand count? (FIVE) — because we all have five hands. Science. Actually, you can plausibly interpret this clue two ways. First—and probably most likely—a single hand allows you to count to FIVE (five digits on each hand, barring table saw injuries). The second interpretation, which I only thought of just now, is that a typical poker "hand" has FIVE cards in it. So your "Hand count" would be FIVE—five cards in your hand. Did anyone read the clue as poker-related? I don't think it's the intended meaning, but it "works."
• 31D: Secret offering? (DEODORANT) — Secret is a brand. A brand of DEODORANT. 
• 50D: Makes do for a while? (PERMS) — oof, real awkward. Makes (a hair)do (that lasts) for a while. 
• 16A: Dialect featured in the literature of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison (AAVE) — African-American Vernacular English. It's been in the puzzle a few times now. 
• 54D: Goal-oriented global org.? (FIFA) — aren't these the corrupt assholes who gave White House (which is apparently what we're calling him now) a completely made-up "Peace Prize"? Yep, the president of FIFA is apparently a close ally of White House. Meanwhile, White House continues to attack citizens of his own country with untrained incompetent sadistic goons who aren't fit for any other kind of employment. This week—flashbangs and tear gas thrown into a van filled with six children, one of whom required CPR. Giving White House a "peace prize" ... that really out-Orwells Orwell (you know, the guy who wrote ANIMAL FARM (59A: Novel whence the line "four legs good, two legs bad"))

["Too scared to join the military / Too dumb to be a cop"]

That’s all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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